Oedipus_Tex

Surely you all know that if you're forced to control a speed run while on Speed Boost (in a cave for example) you simply turn on a jetpack to slow yourself down. And add Ninja Run if you need the extra steerage.

Thank you, Arcana, for taking the time to explain in numbers what a lot of people knew to be true in experience. It's obvious in game that Shield Charge does nuke-damage, but I always assumed that was an intentional decision. I'm glad you were able to explain this in such a way that highlighted the problem. While I'm sure a lot of people will be disappointed in the inevitable downtweak, this is a huge step toward achieving game balance.

The limitations on converting knockback to knockto are most unfortunate. Especially given that the difference between the two is simply to swap the position of caster and target. The alternative is to calculate knockto like a knockback and then rotate the results 180 degrees. This is a fairly standard calculation in games and probably already used somewhat in mob AI to calculate paths when running away from the player, so its a shame it didnt end up encoded in the base engine.

There really isn't one although it depends on what you intend to do with the set.

Well again with the IMOs and firecrackers. The short of it is Speed Boost is a poorly designed power.

Amazing Buff + Instant Recharge + Short Duration = Player stuck buff-botting continuously to achieve what you could have gotten by just increasing the base duration of the power. There is absolutely no reason for Speed Boost to have a 2 minute duration except to test your ability with wind up kitchen timers.

I'm a huge fan of the power design in City of Heroes but Speed Boost stands out to me as the one power I hope is never, ever used as a template for new powers to be based on.

Within the Kinetics set as it exists, tho, it's a power teams will expect. And why I will never play my Kinetics character longer than about 10 minutes at a time before remembering how much I hate this freaking power for being awesome at the cost of ruining your life. ;p

Does it have to be in this game?


I was once a healer in another MMO. I ended up in an impromptu group with a tank type, a second healer, and two other members. I think we had to kill some boss guy in the middle of a small castle.

I think we had just made it past the threshold of the castle entrance when we got aggro from about 8 enemies at once. The two other members died quickly, leaving only me, the tank, and the other healer. The tank started running for it and we healers were spamming our spells as fast as we could. Things were looking good when the tank rounded the top of a small hill and jumped down to the safety of the road, and both I and the other healer followed suit. But just as my feet left the ground, it occurred to me that the road is on the north side of the map and the geographic feature to the south is a CLIFF. All 3 of us died instantly. It was probably the biggest team fail I've ever seen, but was so funny to witness that none of us were able to play for about 20 minutes because everyone was crying with laughter.

Cold Domination is a very powerful but late developing set. I have never actually seen a Plant/Cold Controller but the combo should work well. Stick with it. Once you get Heat Loss endurance more or less becomes taken for granted. If you're soloing you may struggle to keep your pet alive without a heal and weak-ish shields, but overall the combo should do great as a troller/debuffer. I don't see it as much of a farmer.

For concept, you consider some kind of arctic character who summons frozen vines and such (colored white).

This is just an IMO, but a character without mezz protection and the ability to hold aggro is really not a "tank." The character may be very powerful, but what a lot of people are describing is an "opener," not a "tank" as it is usually defined.

Actually my favorite is taking my Force Field Defender into Atlas Park for a game of "minion hockey." Here's how it works.

1) Turn on Super Speed and Force Bubble
2) Find a group of low level enemies
3) Charge at them and watch them fly
4) You get 3 points for sending an enemy past the drones and up the stairs (to the area where Miss Liberty is standing), 15 points if you send the enemy between Atlas' legs. 100 points if it lands in the middle of people doing a costume contest and someone says WTH.

Force Bubble may be a mostly useless power but it sure is entertaining.

I have one, but he's still low level. Slowing things is not really a big draw of this combo, because Fire is a damage-dealing set and you want Containment from Fire Cages pretty much 24/7. It's hard for me to predict how this combo will work out. I'm guessing I will have trouble keeping the imps alive but will have endless endurance to spam powers.

Looking good. I only have 1 minor nitpick. I tend to prefer Defense slotting in Steamy Mists to resistance, especially for this combo. Your Spectral Terror has -ToHit, which stacks with +Defense to make you and your team harder to hit. Combining the two, you'd get around +5 defense from Steamy and -30% ToHit (against a same level enemy) from things hit by Terror. That's actually around what a Controller with Force Fields brings to the table.. tho again only against same level enemies, if they are hit by the Terror.

Technically speaking wall running isn't terribly different than hill running if you plan for it from the start, but very difficult to implement after the fact. I think in this game the maximum angle we're able to run up is around 70 degrees, maybe more or less. When you hit a surface greater than that you'll notice your momentum wear off but you maintain whatever inertia you had when you hit it without gaining new traction. Wall running is essentially increasing the value to 90 degrees, but it has the added problem of requiring a hinge point to reverse the player's gravity. Realistically speaking, if you roll a golf ball up a curved ramp at sufficient speed it could clear an obstacle, but if you shoot it out of a cannon directly into a wall it will just smack into it.

There are some other significant challenges to wall running though. One of them is figuring out where to place the camera when a player is half a foot from the ground and facing upward. I am not sure how other games get around this challenge.

I have to say though that in the age of jet packs and Ninja Run Super Speed has such a lead on the other 3 travel powers that I consider them mostly costume fodder these days. Super Speed is the only travel power I'd consider on an optimized character.

I'm going to elaborate on what JD_Gumby said. Knockback mechanics are fairly confusing.

Here's how I understand it. When you enhance knockback, you actually enhance the Magnitude of the knockback. For example, the base knockback in the power Power Blast is 2.08. If you enhance it with one level 50 knockback IO (+76.4% kb), it becomes Magnitude 3.32.

When determining whether a knockback effects an enemy, we first examine the enemy's knockback protection. The Magnitude of the knockback is subtracted by the amount of Protection the enemy has. if the result is greater than zero, the enemy suffers some degree of knockback/down. If the result is less than zero, the enemy is not knocked back or down. So, for example, if you cast a mag 12 knockback at something with mag 10 protection, it's reduced to a mag 2 knockback but the enemy flies backward. If the enemy instead had mag 100 protection (like you'd get by being rooted), the result would be -88, so the enemy wouldn't fly/fall.

If the enemy is knocked back or down, the next question is how far they will go. To determine this we look at their knockback Resistance. Resistance works as a multiplier like other status effect resistances do, so -100% Knockback doesn't mean you'll never be affected, only that if you are you'll travel half as far. -200% is one third as far, and so on. To my understanding, resistance never completely prevents a knockback/down, but I could be wrong on that.

Now as I am writing this, I see a bug in Mids where Kinetic Crash is not enhancing my Knockback mag. It's reporting that it has the same knockback slotted as it does unslotted.

All of this said, this is how things work in PVE. PVP is a different animal. The only thing I know about knockback in PVP is that you can only do it to a target once every 10 seconds. Also, in PVP, my understanding is that all status protection is converted to resistance. If this is true for knockback and the numbers used are literal, it means any power should be able to knockback/down any player once every 10 seconds more or less regardless of its magnitude. Whether this is how it actually works I can't say since I don't PVP.

EDIT: I posted this at the same time you posted your new build. This post was regarding the original build.

Welcome to Controlling! I think you're going to enjoy it. I have just a few comments on your first build.

- Like UnicyclePeon said before me, you will want Deceive. Take it as soon as possible. If you will be doing a lot of teaming, this is the most important power to slot up early on. Even if you will only be teaming occasionally, it's still important.

- I see that you've taken Air Superiority and Fly. While a lot of people disagree with me, I tend to avoid Fly as a power pick on a Controller. The reason is that very long lasting jet packs are available that perform the same basic function. If I take any travel power at all, it's Super Speed--mainly for the invisibility. These days, a lot of people (like me!) use a power called Ninja Run available by purchasing the Ninja pack on the website for $10. Ninja Run + Hurdle slotted for Jump is very, very fast. It's basically like a mini Super Jump.

- I agree that you will want Hurricane. Great power.

- Thunderclap isn't my favorite power, but note if you slot 2 recharge 2 accuracy 2 disorient, you are able to re-stun same-level mobs faster than the power recharges.

- You won't need Recharge in Recall Friend. I slot one range IO in it. If you decide to spend some money at high levels, you can also toss a knockback resistance enhancer here to keep you from getting thrown backward by attacks.

- You may want to consider a different epic pool. While Psi is just fine, it does mental damage, which is the same as many of your attacks. This could be problematic if you run into something resistant (i.e. robots). The fire and ice pools are fairly popular choices, with Ice probably the more thematic choice.

- One option open to you is to drop Superior Invis for Group Invis. This will cut back on your endurance costs and allow you to hide the entire team. There are some places Superior Invis is.. uh.. superior, (e.g. PVP) but for the most part Group Invis will do the trick. If you're still worried, remember you could combine your Steamy Mists with Super Speed for toggle-based invisibility through most content, and even add a Celerity to your Sprint power to increase the range of your inviso.

- I agree that Tactics won't serve you well, and actually may create some problems for you. Under Tactics pets see further and are more likely to run off and attack groups in the distance.

I hope that was helpful. You should post another build for us to look at and give you some more direction.

But don't Defenders have a lower damage cap than Corruptors?


EDIT: Nevermind, I see that's already been addressed.

I think Local Man gave a great overview of the various combinations. The only one I am going to disagree with is Mind/Storm, which I think has both great synergy and reach.

Mind Control is a strange set. It is petless, and features several "aggroless" powers that can be cast without losing invisibility. Unlike Illusion Control, Mind doesn't have an invisibility power built in--but it can combine Steamy Mists from the Storm set with Super Speed or a crafted enhancement to go invisible. This allows the Mind Controller to turn into what I like to call the "pre-tank." S/he is able to run slightly ahead of the rest of the team setting up the battle field so that by the time the team arrives all of the difficult enemies are out of the picture. The lack of pets means Mind Controllers are able to stay invisible far longer than Illusion Controllers normally would (dragging a Phantasm around will reveal you to enemies). If the team is running late, the Mind Controller can even sleep the group so that they don't kill each other before the team can show up and earn easy XP. The Mind/Storm Controller can even leave a Lightning Cloud behind to help out the team before racing off to the next group (as long as the cloud is far enough away that it won't aggro the next set of enemies).

Mind also benefits strongly from Freezing Rain, since it has no -knockback powers, and no patch powers of its own. The one power it doesn't particularly handle well is Tornado, which some characters can use as extra damage source. On a Mind Controller its more like a chaos source. Whether this matters depends on how often you team. Even on characters that can use -KB holds, I never, ever, use Tornado unless I'm fighting an AV because of the power's tendency to go rogue and chase down enemies I didnt expect it to.

Keep in mind that if you go Fire/Kin some people will assume the worst about you. It's pretty much the calling card set for terri-bad players. Obviously not everyone who plays it is like that... but you get a lot of people with that combo because they heard it's "the best." It's popular with the sort of people who like to wipe your team while informing you how awesome they are. Don't let that affect your decision to play it, just be prepared for the assumption when you join a team.